Five months after Lok Sabha speaker Somnath Chatterjee’s proposal of ‘no work no pay’ for legislators, for wasting parliamentary time by disrupting proceedings, the vice president of India (also the chairman of the Rajya Sabha), Hamid Ansari has expressed his concern about this trend.

MPs and political parties obviously consider agitation during parliamentary proceedings their genuine function and do not regard this stalling as waste of parliamentary time and public money. However, that a Lok Sabha speaker thought it necessary to propose such drastic measures reflects the gravity of the situation. In August Chatterjee relayed public feedback on the recalcitrance of MPs, cautioning the parliamentarians, “We are increasingly being criticised, we are losing credibility as an institution.”

Dr B.R. Ambedkar, in his concluding speech at the penultimate session of the Constituent Assembly on 25 November 1949, said: “If we wish to maintain democracy not merely in form, but also in fact, there are first things in my judgment we must do... to hold fast to constitutional methods of achieving our social and economic objectives. It means that we must abandon the methods of disobedience, non-cooperation and satyagraha — where constitutional methods are open, there can be no justification for these unconstitutional methods. These methods are nothing but the grammar of anarchy and the sooner they are abandoned, the better for us.”

However, Ambedkar could not have imagined their routine application in legislatures to appeal to constituencies in this era of ‘virtual politics’ and television reality shows. His comment strikes a chord today when hardly any significant issue is discussed without cantankerous sloganeering, sit-ins and walkouts by the opposition leading to stalling of the business of the Parliament. Sadly, the prime minister had to read his statement on the nuclear deal amidst continued slogan-shouting.

... contd.